Best Public Mountain Golf in New England
Mountain golf is different. Course architect Robert Trent Jones II describes it as “three-dimensional geometry, with more variables” than flat-land courses, and that’s absolutely true. How often do you have to factor in meaningful elevation changes during an average round on your home course? On mountain tracks, it’s required on just about every shot. After you’ve assessed the over-the-land yardage, and after you tossed some grass in the air and decided what effect the wind might have, you then need to determine how much uphill or downhill the shot is and how much that slope will affect your club selection. In recent years, some laser rangefinders have come equipped with the ability to judge that slope for you and offer up a compensatory yardage. But that’s no fun. What is fun, though, is standing on a tee 100 feet above a fairway and watching your tee shot hang in the air for what feels like a decade before coming back down to earth. That’s an experience that only a mountain course can offer.
How do you find a good mountain course? One way is to watch where the best skiers go in the wintertime and scout that area. Many mountain courses were created in association with top ski resorts to give those properties a second life in summer and fall. And this is especially true in northern New England, where a flurry of course development happened in latter decades of the 20th century.
Here are 13 courses that represent the best of public mountain golf in the region—but there are more to explore.
Maine
Sugarloaf Golf Club—Carrabassett Valley
Sugarloaf is the New England course that most vividly demonstrates how spectacular mountain golf can be when a designer is willing to employ the landscape rather than merely decorate it. Robert Trent Jones II designed this spectacular 18-hole course, which opened in 1984 at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain. The course quickly became nationally recognized and has spent years at or near the top of most Maine rankings and on national lists of America’s best public courses. Its reputation is not based solely on scenery, though: the course can be severe, with Jones using elevation, water, bunkers, and narrow target lines to make players earn their good scores. Unlike mountain courses that are sited in valleys or mostly go up and down the mountain, the holes at Sugarloaf often sweep diagonally up the sides of slopes, making elevation changes harder to judge and presenting lies that are almost never flat. Sugarloaf is mountain golf stripped to its essentials: wilderness, elevation, risk, reward, and spectacular vistas.
Sunday River Golf Club—Newry
Sunday River is another Robert Trent Jones II creation, but where Sugarloaf feels rugged and nearly untamable, Sunday River is gentler and flowing. The 18-hole course opened in 2005 in a bowl set in the western Maine mountains, with views toward the impressive Mahoosuc Range. It quickly earned praise for its playable but tough design and has hosted a slew of top amateur events, including the Maine Amateur Championship. At Sunday River, Jones managed to create a championship mountain layout without making it feel like an engineering project. Fairways move with the land, and elevation changes are dramatic enough to create excitement without constantly demanding blind or awkward shots. How well you judge them will in large part determine which way your handicap moves after playing this stellar New England mountain course.
